Here’s the operating principle for NDP transportation planning over the next while — if the B.C. Liberals had even the fleeting thought of starting something, hunt down that thought and kill it. Then, after a suitable cleansing period, start over and re-plan the project from a fresh NDP perspective.
That’s essentially what is happening with the Massey Tunnel replacement project. The tunnel is an aged nightmare that has to be replaced soon, and it’s probably going to be replaced by a bridge. It just can’t be a bridge that former premier Christy Clark had anything to do with.
So the NDP government has frozen the project, written off about $47 million in costs and is going to consult for a while. It will likely eventually arrive at the second sentence in the previous paragraph: The tunnel is an aged nightmare that has to be replaced soon, and it’s probably going to be replaced by a bridge.
Something similar is happening with the E&N rail line, the traditional Island punching bag for transportation geeks going back generations. Former transportation minister Todd Stone announced in March a study of the potential for Greater Victoria commuter rail that kindled for the umpteenth time the vision of something actually happening on the derelict line.
There was a bit of a discount on the news, because it was the pre-election period and the E&N gets dragged out every campaign by one party or another. But still, Stone projected a gung-ho attitude.
“I expect a business case on our desks, ready for the next government to consider, so that we can finally move forward with commuter rail here.”
But events intervened, transportation czar Stone was dethroned, and a new czarina, Claire Trevena, took over. As she told the Times Colonist last week: “We pulled back on that one.” She snuffed the business case before it even got started.
Stone demanded to know what happened to his business case in the legislature on Wednesday. Trevena said the Liberals had 16 years to realize the capital of B.C. was on the Island but ignored all the transportation problems. She said that just before the election, the Liberals realized they had a “Vancouver Island tragedy,” so they called for a study.
The underlying message was: If there’s any commuter-rail study to be done on the E&N, it’s going to be an NDP-inspired study. The trouble with that premise is that Trevena wants to back up a lot further than just to March. She wants to go back years and re-examine the entire rail corridor from Victoria to Courtenay.
That means reading through the whole tragic history of the defunct railway once again. The short form of the history is that the entire line north of Goldstream Park is a ruin that would cost hundreds of millions to do anything with. It’s a generation away from being viable. The only salvageable part is a potential commuter run from downtown to Langford.
The longer version of the story involves the 2006 transfer of the right-of-way to the Island Corridor Foundation, a dream that held immense promise. But it never went anywhere. Local governments are getting tired of writing cheques every year to support the foundation and getting nothing in return.
Also, a First Nation balked near the conclusion of one deal, which reduces the likelihood of any progress. And safety concerns now dominate any talk about what to do next.
Trevena knows the story as well as anyone, so she scarcely needs to pay some consultant to write it again. It’s much more likely that she ditched the previous Liberal government’s business plan study simply because it was a Liberal idea. That’s a small-minded reason to cancel something that could have produced some interesting ideas, even if it was a campaign gimmick.
If the NDP government really decides to examine the whole corridor, here’s a guess on what will happen. It will take a few years to conduct and digest, and it will eventually conclude it’s not viable. So near the eve of the next election, they’ll need to tick off the E&N box and come up with an idea.
How about a study on the potential for Greater Victoria commuter rail?
